This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. I'm so happy to be here speaking to you tonight. Welcome, everybody. A little town. Turn it down a little bit. Thanks. It's got this background hum. Yeah, that's good. Thank you. Welcome, retreatants and practitioners of every stripe. A lot going on in Tassajara right now. I'm currently leading this lovely Wildflowers and Birds of Tassajara I'm having so much fun co-leading this with the amazing Diane Ranshaw.

[01:06]

Diane has been doing this particular retreat for 24 years. Busted. Next year, we're going to have a special anniversary. Me, it's only five. I'm a newbie. I've been doing this. Yeah, this is my fifth time doing this with Diane. I'm so happy. to be doing it. And we've got a lot of yogis here and the Santa Cruz Zen Center and Monterey Bay Zen Center come here to do the one-day sitting. It's so great to see so many people I know and love and especially welcome our new abbot, David Zimmerman, Abbott Tenzin. This morning was the first time David did the morning greeting, the morning jundo, we call it, and the greeting in the Tassajara Zendo as abbot. Yes.

[02:08]

Thank you. I'm not the only one. Yeah, for me, it's epic. I have a really, really great feeling about that. I'd like to begin by... thanking and... Oh, I forgot to say my name is Greg Fane. Hi, I'm Greg. Yeah. And I want to begin by thanking and acknowledging my teacher, Sojin Mel Weitzman Roshi, the abbot of Berkeley Zen Center. And he'll be back down here later on this summer. And also to say that this... talk is just to encourage you in your practice. Oh, and Happy Mother's Day. To all you mothers, Happy Mother's Day. That's tomorrow, I know, but this is my chance to say it.

[03:12]

To everybody who has or has had a mother, Happy Mother's Day. Yeah. So this is Esalen land, right? You all know that. This is Esalen territory. There are traces of the original inhabitants of this land. I could show you down behind the courtyard cabins a big boulder with grinding depressions, grinding rock called, where they ground the acorns that was a staple of their diet. On the altar in the kitchen is a pestle that we found when we were digging a grave for Tassahara dog. We dug up this pestle some years ago.

[04:14]

I have this wonderful book, The Esalen Indians of the Big Sur Country. I'm sorry to say this is not for sale in the bookstore, but if you find a copy, snatch it up. It's pretty special. The gentleman on the cover, this is Grandfather Fred Nason. Grandfather, sometimes when I talk about him, I say grandfather, people think... Is he your grandfather? Is he your grandfather? No, no. It's a term of respect, you know. A tribal elder. So we call him grandfather. Grandfather Fred. He passed away on January 29, 2015. And I really miss him. Grandfather Fred and his extended family are our nearest neighbors on Tassajara Road.

[05:19]

As you drive out, and you pass the national forest boundary, the first property is the Ventana Ranch, which is their place. Yeah. Grandfather Fred and his son, my friend Tommy Little Bear Nason, have been practicing Esalen Ways. All their lives. Sometime in the 90s, there was some, I believe they were forest service archaeologists. They were doing a dig. They found these remains. 4,000 years old. They figured, 4,000 year old human remains. And one of these archaeologists was in touch with the Nason family. And they said, hey, you know,

[06:22]

What we can do, we have the technology, we could examine the DNA from these remains. We could match it against your DNA. That could help to establish your claims to legitimacy as Esalen people. Little Bear was really dubious. I think he was justifiably suspicious. We're from the government. What could go wrong? Grandfather said, go for it. Let's do it. Take our DNA. 100% match. I want to read you a little bit, just a little bit. This book was written by Gary Braschini and Shruti Havisat, their partners.

[07:28]

They're archaeologists as well. My copy is autographed. Tassajara 2017, it says. We have them down here. And Gary, sadly, passed away the next year. He passed away last summer. Greatly, greatly missed. A wonderful, wonderful man. De Esalen knew their territory intimately. It was not a large territory, measuring perhaps 25 by 40 miles at the most, and shared among five separate, although closely related groups. But each person spent his or her lifetime within the boundaries of the group. In time, they knew every trail, every rock, and every tree. They knew each herd of deer, and the individual animals in that herd. When they hunted, it was not a random as when we often hunt today.

[08:29]

After the proper preparation rituals, the Esalen hunters would most likely pursue a particular herd and perhaps one or more individual deer." Amazing. And then elsewhere in the book, Gary and Trudy write about what we Around here, what we refer to as the mission impact. When the California missions were established, two worlds came into contact and eventually into conflict. On one side were the California Indians, with an extremely diversified aggregation of languages and lifestyles. The Indian groups encountered by the missionaries lived along the coast and in the adjacent valleys, as had their ancestors going back perhaps 10,000 years or more. Their cultures had been maturing and their populations expanding throughout that immense length of time.

[09:33]

They had developed codes of behavior to govern themselves and cultural institutions to regulate their lives. As their technology grew more complex, they were increasingly able to manipulate their surroundings. Life was often hard, but they had long since learned how to survive and to prosper. When the Spanish missionaries arrived, they encountered a number of distinct, well-established cultures, each with their own worldview to explain who they were and to describe their proper place in the universe. The missionaries, too, were the product of several thousand years of social and cultural evolution. European culture had grown and expanded, often borrowing from other cultures, until it developed a technology which allowed it to spread throughout much of the world in search of wealth and natural resources, and spiritual conquest. Europeans, too, had an elaborate code of behavior embodied in the institutions of the civil government and church law. The two worldviews, Indian versus European, were considerably different, and when they came into contact, you know what happened.

[10:38]

I don't have to tell you the rest of the story. And... What I'd like to talk about tonight, although I could talk about the esthen for the entire talk, what I'd actually like to talk about is worldviews. So, Gary and Trudy write, two conflicting worldviews came into contact. In our retreat, we've been talking about... an essay written by our founder in Japan, Ehe Dogen. If you were here last Wednesday, listen to the lovely Dharma talk given by my friend Charlie Pokorny. He was also talking about Dogen and Dogen's essay, Genjo Koan. Dogen brought this lineage of Buddhism, of Zen, from China to Japan in the beginning of the 13th century.

[11:50]

The essay we've been looking at is called Mountains and Waters Sutra, Sansui Kyo. And some of us have been reading it, studying it, in preparation for Abbot David's practice period in the fall. Because he told me that's what he's going to teach. So some of us got a head start. And in the essay, fascicle we call them, There's a teaching based on, derived from, a very ancient teaching from what we call Yogacara. It's a philosophical school of ancient Indian Buddhism from a teacher around the 5th century of the common era. This teacher's name was Asvabhava.

[12:52]

and he wrote a commentary on another teacher's treatise on emerging Mahayana, Mahayana Samgraha in Sanskrit. It's been kind of an important teaching and Dogen was well aware of it because our guy had the entire Buddhist canon at his fingertips, as you know. Very intelligent person. In Japanese, you say isui shi ken. This is what I learned studying it. Isui shi ken means one water, four views, or just four views of water. Asva Bhava writes, it is like water whose nature remains the same. But as celestial beings, human beings, hungry ghosts and fish do not carry the same effect from past causations.

[13:57]

They each see water differently. Celestial beings see it as jewels. People in the world see it as water. Hungry ghosts see it as pus and blood. And fish see it as a palace. So it's one water, four really different views. In Sanskrit-kyo, Dogen writes. This is Karl Bielefeld's translation. Karl Bielefeld, a very well-known Buddhist scholar, as a young man, wrote his master's thesis on Sanskrit-kyo. He translated it from Japanese, and this is what he was working on in the late 60s for his master's thesis at Stanford. And he came down to Tassajara and got a little help from somebody named Suzuki Roshi. How about that? Suzuki Roshi helped me with my master's thesis.

[14:59]

This is his translation. In general, then, the way of seeing mountains and waters differs according to the type of being that sees them. In seeing water, there are beings who see it as a jeweled necklace. This does not mean, however, that they see a jeweled necklace as water. How then do we see what they consider water? Their jeweled necklace is what we see as water. Some see water as miraculous flowers, though it does not follow that they use flowers as water. Hungry ghosts see water as raging flames or as pus and blood. Dragons and fish see it as a palace or a tower or as the seven treasures or the mani jen. Others see it as woods and walls or as the Dharma nature of immaculate liberation or as the true human body or as the physical form and mental nature. Humans see these as water. And these different ways of seeing are the conditions under which water is killed or given life.

[16:06]

Given that what different types of beings see is different, we should have some doubts about this. Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object? Or is it that we have mistaken various images for one object? At the peak of our concentrated effort on this, we should concentrate still more. Therefore, our practice and verification, our pursuit of the way, must also be not merely of one or two kinds. And the ultimate realm must also have a thousand types and ten thousand kinds. Some of you may notice also some resonance to what Charlie was talking about last Wednesday and what we chant here on a regular basis, the Genjo Koan. In fact, I'm sure that some of you could chant it along with me right now.

[17:11]

When you sail out in a boat to the midst of an ocean where no land is in sight and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. That's where he gets that from. In case you were wondering about that reference in Genjo Koan, that's Yisui Shiken. So, I was going for a walk one day with a dear friend. We happened to be walking. We were walking along through some trees and they were talking about trees. We were talking about trees. And my friend said, hey, you know, scientists now say that trees can talk to each other. And I kind of chuckled.

[18:13]

And she said, what, that's funny? You know, it's something I do. That annoys people sometimes. I chuckle. Yeah. Sorry. I said, no. It's just that you're talking about that like it's news. Like now scientists say. Scientists say the trees can talk to each other. And there are people, people's populations known for thousands of years. that trees talk to each other. I think so. The Esalen knew perfectly well that the tree people talk to each other, the plant people talk to each other, the owl people talk to each other, the whale people talk to each other. They knew this perfectly well.

[19:16]

They didn't need any scientists explaining it. You know that whales in some subsonic vibrations, in some layers of the ocean, can hear each other at a distance of 10,000 miles? Potentially. That's across the Pacific. possibly since before primates were walking upright. Certainly before there was a worldwide web, there was worldwide whales. They knew what was going on all over the world, talking to each other, singing epic poetry, in sagas and song cycles that take years to repeat.

[20:22]

No, I made that last bit up. But the thing is, you don't know that that's not true. Right? The world of mythos, the world of magic, Many people, it seems, just count it. Scientists haven't said that yet. Okay, but... The ultimate realm must also have a thousand types and ten thousand kinds. Or I could say the ultimate realm does... have 10,000 types and 10,000 kinds. The features of oceans are infinite in variety.

[21:25]

Infinite. Just does. Must also be, not merely, of one or two kinds. What I love about San Sui Kyo, what I love about this particular passage is and Dogen's teaching here, is being so gentle. He's being so kind with us, as he often is. He's just saying, hey, check it out, you know, just don't be so sure. Because me, you know, when I read this, and I read must also be not merely of one or two kinds, I kind of think, yeah, that's where we get into trouble, you know. Water is like this. And if you disagree with me, we have a problem. People do that, you know.

[22:27]

People do that sometimes. And it causes suffering. We say, this is reality. What's your problem, pal? Here's another book that is for sale in our bookstore. called White Fragility. This is not a Dharma book, but aspects of it are very dharmic to me when I read and studied this book. Highly recommend it. Robin DiAngelo, the author, her thesis, kind of major premise that she lays out in the beginning of the book is that the big problem with the way white supremacist thought is maintained and sustained is in Western thinking. There's these two big emphases often on individualism and objective reality.

[23:34]

And those are two things that Buddhism has a lot to say about. So, to me, Dogen here, he's talking about objective reality, this belief in objective reality, these four views of water. Fish, see water as a palace. It's objective reality. What are you talking about? This is a palace. This is amazing. It's my home. And heavenly beings see it as a jewel. What? You don't? You mean you don't? Huh, that's weird. Huh. But it causes some problems. it has the potential to cause a lot of problems, a lot of difficulties. This book was published last year, 2018. In an earlier essay Robin DiAngelo wrote in 2011, she said, Whites are taught to see their perspectives as objective and representative of reality.

[24:48]

The belief in objectivity, coupled with positioning white people as outside of culture, and thus the norm for humanity, allows whites to view themselves as universal humans who can represent all of human experience. This is evidenced through an unracialized identity or location which functions as a kind of blindness, an inability to think about whiteness as an identity or as a state of being that would or could have an impact on one's life. In this position, whiteness is not recognized or named by white people, and a universal reference point is assumed. White people are just people. This is objective reality. Do you have a problem with that? Yes. Yes, I do. Many people do. There's a perfectly logical explanation? No. No. Don't want to hear the perfectly logical explanation. Don't want to hear it. must be not merely of one or two kinds.

[25:50]

The ultimate realm must also have a thousand types and ten thousand kinds. And to the extent that we can open to the thousand types and ten thousand kinds, I think we'd all be better off. I think so. Challenging worldviews can be tricky business, even dangerous. That's what I really like about Dogen. He's so kind. He's just saying, hey, just look at it. Just hold it up. We should question this. We should have some doubts about this. Another translation is, we should question this. Just question it. Don't be so sure. About 50 years ago, my older brother Russ was in the ninth grade They were having some discussion in class. He said something.

[26:53]

I mean, I wasn't there. He was in a different grade. But he said something like, I don't know what they were discussing, but he put his hand up and said, I don't think competition is all that great. What's so great about competition? I don't really see that as a value to be upheld. Every boy in the classroom turned on him. Like, you're crazy. They're just like, no. Their whole worldview is being threatened. You know, all their conditioning threatened. You're crazy. You're crazy. That's crazy. You might feel crazy. That could happen. Then if it does, find a friend. Find a teacher.

[27:54]

I was talking to somebody who said they left the Tassajara Zendo at night and walked out looked up at the sky, the big night sky full of stars. They said the sky started breathing, pulsing, alive. I kind of looked at them and, you know, I did a quick assessment. nose vertical, eyes horizontal. You're all right. You're just fine. And then I said something that I think surprised us both. I said, cool. It is alive, isn't it?

[29:01]

Of course it's alive. There's nothing but life. There's nothing but life. There's nothing but consciousness. You experience it this way? Great. Enjoy that. No big deal. These different ways of seeing are the conditions under which water is killed or given life. Maybe you think, Water is for making slurry to pump into the ground to extract oil from fracking. Maybe you think mountains are for blowing the tops off of them to get at the coal inside. Maybe so. Maybe that's your view of mountains and waters. No. I'm with Dogen.

[30:04]

I just say we should have some doubts about this. That's all. Examine it. What's he say? Our practice and verification, our pursuit of the way. No. At the peak of our concentrated effort on this, we should concentrate still more. Please do. Please do. I think, you know, For many people, these are frightening times. We show each other how we can sit upright and offer some measure of safety and encouragement to a troubled world. When I finish my talk, we'll chant the four bodhisattva vows.

[31:16]

Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. The many beings, the numberless beings, many of which their days may be numbered, I vow to save them. It's an impossible vow. So? It's an impossible situation. It's an impossible vow. It's a perfect match. Do it. Because we must. Thanks for your attention. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[32:21]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[32:31]

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